On the same day when the Supreme Court said that privacy is a fundamental right, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that there is a need to adopt a rights-based approach to privacy while collecting financial data rather than the traditional consent-based approach. "We therefore briefly discuss a potentially valuable new lens through which to consider the data privacy issue, considering the potential of a rights-based approach, which stands in contrast to the more standard consent-based approach that is widely prevalent," the RBI noted in the report of the Household Finance Committee. The RBI also said that committee examined whether the use of consent as the primary line of defense against privacy violation will actually ensure the protection of personal data in the context of modern technologies. "We note that technological advances such as machine learning and big data have changed the ways in which we process data and as a result, have made consent a less than effective tool to protect personal privacy" the report read. The RBI also had an interesting observation of Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden where vast amounts of granular household data are readily available. "An analysis of the data protection regulations in those countries does not seem to indicate the existence of a more liberal approach on matters pertaining to personal privacy. Instead, it appears that confidence in State capacity to ensure privacy protection and trust in enforcement mechanisms inherent in the existing law offers enough safeguards to ensure the availability of large volumes of useable household…
